Curses! Foiled again. My plans to enjoy a Coen-esque and Actual-Coen double feature are all for naught, as A Serious Man still isn't playing here. My desire to see The Men Who Stare at Goats continues unabated, but it flies solo for the time being.
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There's been a bit of yammering from David Goyer about how Ghost Rider 2 is going to be "darker" and "more existential" than the first film. He even went so far as to say "You don't have to have seen the first film. It doesn't contradict anything that happened in the first film, but we're pretending that our audience hasn't seen the first film," and suggested that this would be to Ghost Rider what Casino Royale was to James Bond.
And that's fine. He can say "stripped down and darker", but no matter what any sequel to Ghost Rider will be unintentionally ridiculous. You can't help it, because (as Goyer admits), this is a film about a guy with a flaming skull. With Nicholas Cage. The truth is that, Leaving Las Vegas aside, Cage films work better when he's bat-shit crazy, not being mopey and serious.
It's one of the big reasons that Bangkok Dangerous just didn't work (aside from being a bad movie to begin with). Nicholas Cage playing unhinged characters tends to make otherwise forgettable garbage more palatable, even if just for a drunken night of snarky comments. That may be the only reason worth watching Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, because right now not even Werner Herzog can convince me he made something that looks so inane on purpose.
But I digress. The point to keep in mind is that no matter what David Goyer promises you about the sequel to Ghost Rider, he's still the man responsible for the awe-inspiringly stupid Blade Trinity. If you haven't seen the movie yourself, ask around or dare a rental. Then decide how dark and existential another Ghost Rider movie could really be.
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I've finished the first disc of Monty Python: Almost the Truth, with additional augmenting of material from Monty Python Conquers America (available in the most recent boxed set). What Conquers America does is fill in some gaps from episodes three and four of Almost the Truth, specifically regarding the post-Flying Circus era and John Cleese's hesitancy to tag along after the Canadian tour and subsequent American courting phase.
Almost the Truth continued to be about as thorough as a long-form piece about Monty Python is going to get. After wrapping up the early phase of the show, episode three dives into the writing processes of each of the Pythons and how this eventually split the group up. No amount of gossip is spared and you get a pretty good idea why things fell apart around season three, plus a reasonable amount of time devoted to a post-mortem of season four.
The Holy Grail episode may be a bit misleading, since the early portion is devoted to how And Now for Something Completely Different came to be, although not why it was shelved by Columbia (something that Conquers America covers) initially. The albums get a little bit of attention too, but only the pre-film records. You do learn that had Terry Gilliam not bought all of the Python tapes from the BBC, there might be no Monty Python today, as they were scheduled to be wiped.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail has some interesting footage and more frankness from John Cleese about making the film than I can recall anywhere else, but not much else is new. If you've read Gilliam on Gilliam or seen any interviews about Holy Grail, you know about the issues the cast and crew had with two directors (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones), neither of whom had ever directed anything before. Disc two has the final episodes, devoted to The Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life, the death of Graham Chapman, Spamalot, and post-Python observations. When it arrives from Netflix, I'll watch it.
On a total side note, it was a curious piece of apocrypha to discover that Bob Wilson, who was in charge of the Dallas PBS station that first ran Monty Python's Flying Circus, is the father of Owen and Luke Wilson (who was interviewed for the documentary). Also, I don't know how I hadn't heard this before, but Holy Grail was largely sponsored by bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, which in some ways anticipates their involvement with George Harrison on Life of Brian.
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If any die-hard Richard Kelly fans are still out there, I hope you enjoy The Box. Undoubtedly his newest film is another chapter in the auteur-iffic saga of "reminiscent of just making this shit up but secretly brilliant" just like you keep telling me Southland Tales is. Or the director's cut of Donnie Darko. I'm the one who isn't getting it, so just keep looking down with me in hipster mock-pity.
Showing posts with label Monty Python. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Monty Python. Show all posts
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
The only problem is I can't remember how the second one ended...
I don't know how many of you went poking around that link I put up for Chicago last night, but the Cap'n did a bit more digging and found the following classes from 1999-2008, any of which would have brightened up a semester:
Mastroianni and Keitel: Comparative Masculinities and Ethnicities
Eastern European New Wave
Issues in Film Music
Sound Theory/Sound Practice
New Deal Culture: Stage, Screen and the Public Sphere in the 1930s
African-American Migration Narratives
Eisenstein and Soviet Aesthetic Theory
The Divided Heaven: The 1960s in West Germany and the German Democratic Republic
Slavic Critical Theory from Jakobson to Zizek
The Persistence of Surrealism: Buñuel and Beyond
Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev
Novel Films: Cinematic Adaptations of Russian and Polish Literary Works
Pinocchio's Afterlife in Cinema, Literature, and Popular Culture
The Detective and Crime Film
Jan Svankmajer and Contemporary Surrealism
Cinema and the Queer Avant-Garde, 1920 to 1950
From Page to Screen: Literary Adaptation in the Italian Cinema
Cinema as Vernacular Modernism
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In other news, I've been watching IFC's Monty Python: Almost the Truth, which is - if possible - even more thorough and comprehensive than previous documentaries on the subject. That, of course, is exactly what the opening title song says, which itself is a re-working of the title song to The Life of Brian and sung once again by Sonia Jones.
You'd do well not to heed the episode titles, as "The Not So Interesting Beginnings" is actually quite interesting, particularly for the access to the British comedy that preceded Monty Python's Flying Circus. The episode does a good job of juggling just how the Pythons met each other, circled around the core group writing for David Frost, and came together almost as an accident.
as a side note: the clips from Do Not Adjust Your Set and At Last the 1948 Show look much better here than they do on the dvd releases. Curiously, Flying Circus looks roughly the same, which raises questions about whether the show is actually going to be cleaned up for the inevitable Blu Ray release. Considering how astonishing The Prisoner looks, I'd be disappointed if the Python result was merely a dvd quality upgrade.
Sensing that most people want to jump straight to the show itself - even though they ought to watch episode one - most of the "famous Python fans" begin popping up in episode two. Truthfully, I found it less odd seeing Russell Brand and Steve Coogan juxtaposed than I did realizing Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson is one of the very first celebrities to describe the show from a fan's perspective. Odd.
I haven't watched episodes 3-6 yet, although they should be quite interesting; other than the book The Pythons by the Pythons, you don't often hear the members of the group talking about why they kept splitting up and reforming for the movies, which is what the second half of the six hours is about. I shall dutifully report my findings upon completing the series.
Mastroianni and Keitel: Comparative Masculinities and Ethnicities
Eastern European New Wave
Issues in Film Music
Sound Theory/Sound Practice
New Deal Culture: Stage, Screen and the Public Sphere in the 1930s
African-American Migration Narratives
Eisenstein and Soviet Aesthetic Theory
The Divided Heaven: The 1960s in West Germany and the German Democratic Republic
Slavic Critical Theory from Jakobson to Zizek
The Persistence of Surrealism: Buñuel and Beyond
Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev
Novel Films: Cinematic Adaptations of Russian and Polish Literary Works
Pinocchio's Afterlife in Cinema, Literature, and Popular Culture
The Detective and Crime Film
Jan Svankmajer and Contemporary Surrealism
Cinema and the Queer Avant-Garde, 1920 to 1950
From Page to Screen: Literary Adaptation in the Italian Cinema
Cinema as Vernacular Modernism
---
In other news, I've been watching IFC's Monty Python: Almost the Truth, which is - if possible - even more thorough and comprehensive than previous documentaries on the subject. That, of course, is exactly what the opening title song says, which itself is a re-working of the title song to The Life of Brian and sung once again by Sonia Jones.
You'd do well not to heed the episode titles, as "The Not So Interesting Beginnings" is actually quite interesting, particularly for the access to the British comedy that preceded Monty Python's Flying Circus. The episode does a good job of juggling just how the Pythons met each other, circled around the core group writing for David Frost, and came together almost as an accident.
as a side note: the clips from Do Not Adjust Your Set and At Last the 1948 Show look much better here than they do on the dvd releases. Curiously, Flying Circus looks roughly the same, which raises questions about whether the show is actually going to be cleaned up for the inevitable Blu Ray release. Considering how astonishing The Prisoner looks, I'd be disappointed if the Python result was merely a dvd quality upgrade.
Sensing that most people want to jump straight to the show itself - even though they ought to watch episode one - most of the "famous Python fans" begin popping up in episode two. Truthfully, I found it less odd seeing Russell Brand and Steve Coogan juxtaposed than I did realizing Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson is one of the very first celebrities to describe the show from a fan's perspective. Odd.
I haven't watched episodes 3-6 yet, although they should be quite interesting; other than the book The Pythons by the Pythons, you don't often hear the members of the group talking about why they kept splitting up and reforming for the movies, which is what the second half of the six hours is about. I shall dutifully report my findings upon completing the series.
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